2015-07-23

Bodies lay beneath trees after the blast outside a cultural centre in the mostly Kurdish town of Suruc in southeastern Turkey, some 10km from the Syrian town of Kobani, where Kurdish fighters have been battling Islamic State.

The explosion tore through a group of mostly university-aged students from an activist group as they gathered to make a statement to the local press about a trip they were planning to help rebuild Kobani.

Amidst the tragedy of the attack is a little bit of leftist schadenfreude. The "Federation of Socialist Youth Associations" was in preparation for a trip across the border into Syria. Their mission: to identify and root out terrorists who would cause the collapse of civil society in their beloved homeland. Haha, just kidding. They wanted to go to Kobani to "build a library, plant a forest, and build a playground" as impromptu spokesman Fatma Edemen told the Reuters News Service. This is the sort of hippie-dippie nonsense we expect from 22-year-old journalism students, sadly. ISIS isn't dominating Syria because Kobani's library wasn't up-to-snuff, or because militants were upset with Turkey over Syrian deforestation.

The Federation of Socialist Youth Associations [they are a federation of associations? as in they are a plural of a plural? let's just call them FSYA and tacitly acknowledge there's only one 'group' involved --ed] had an unrealistic idea of the problems and/or solutions in Syria. Their SJW mentality proved fatal, and while it's horrible that they had to die to learn that lesson, hopefully the lesson is in at least some small part learned.

There's also, by the way, a lesson for the Americans and their southern border troubles that keep catching Donald Trump's attention:

Turkey’s Nato allies have been seeking tighter controls on a porous border with Syria that runs alongside Islamic State-held territories. But monitoring is difficult with 1.8 million Syrian refugees now on the Turkish side and smuggling rife.

Once the border becomes porous it just becomes more and more so. As more Mexicans -- sorry, I mean Syrians -- cross over into Turkey, the support network for more smuggling and more dangerous criminals entering your territory without your knowledge grows and grows. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has promised increased to "measures" along the Syrian border. It would be nice for President Monkey to at least follow suit.